Mike's Draft Reactions

Mike's Team
Josephus
Israel Ben Eliezer
Simon Bar Khokba
Joseph Pulitzer
Moses Ben Nahman
Emile Durkheim
Trudy Weiss-Rosmarin
Harry Houdini
Lev Vygotsky
Annie Liebowitz
Larry David
Rachel Adler
George Gershwin
Nadine Gordimer
Paul Simon
Zsa Zsa Gabor
Dennis Gabor
Gene Simmons
George Soros

about my team:

being the only Gentile participating in the draft definitely affected my picks. i felt the need to start out with, for lack of a better word, Jewishly-important Jews early on, which i tried to do with 4 of my first 5 picks. i'm especially pleased with picking Simon Bar Kokhba, as that satisifed one of my main goals: to frustrate one of the other three drafters at least once by taking somebody that they really wanted and would have taken with their next pick. Ian, who wanted Bar Kokhba, later returned the favor by taking the most important Hungarian Jew in history, Theodor Herzl. personally important picks dominated the rest of my draft: Durkheim, Vygotsky and Gordimer were all among my favorites in school (for sociology, psychology, and literature respectively). Pulitzer, Houdini, and my last five picks are all, like my mother and her whole family, Hungarian. don't be fooled by the seemingly trivial Jewishness of some of these picks. for example, Gene Simmons, after his father abandoned him, came to America when he was 8 years old with his mother, the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust. and, yes, he breathes fire, spits blood, and wags an astoundingly long tongue. i like that my team has the highest number of both muscians and women.

picks on other teams i most wanted: Ian's: Herzl, Dave's: Wiesel, ASA's: Chomsky